


Woodwose

by RembrandtsWife



Series: Northumberland [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Fawnlock, Gen, Inspired by Fanart, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-04 01:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something walks out of the legends and into the light behind  John Watson's cottage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Woodwose

**Author's Note:**

> This falls between "Northumberland" and "Rutting". There will probably be more stories before "Rutting" and some after, if the Muse continues to wear his Fawnlock costume and beckon me. Once again, props to bennyslegs/Paula for conceiving of Fawnlock and sharing him with other artists and writers. Any resemblance to the BBC's Sherlock is kind of accidental at this point.

John Watson woke in Uncle Hamish's cottage in the Northumbrian woods with a strange word floating on the surface of his mind. "Woodwose." He said it out loud, in the silence of the little bedroom. Was it something out of Tolkien, maybe, or out of Uncle Hamish's stories? He had not read any Tolkien in over twenty years, and Uncle Hamish had been dead nearly as long.

He was on his third cup of tea, after breakfast, before it all came back to him: The long walk through the afternoon woods, the spring by the rocks, and the chase back through the darkened woods to the cottage, pursuing or pursued by something he never quite saw. He had run with a torch in one hand and a compass in the other, forgetting his cane. It had been terrifying and exhilarating and glorious.

He rinsed out his mug and left it on the drainer and then opened the back door. He hadn't, before last night. He'd wound up behind the house, looking at the lighted lamp through the kitchen window, and had remembered he had a key for the back door and fumbled his way in, stumbling, laughing. Even now the lock was a little stiff, but then the door swung inward--

There, propped on the back step, was his cane.

Every hair on John Watson's body stood up as the adrenalin kicked in. In a moment his breathing turned quick and shallow, emergency breathing, as if he were under fire. He felt light-headed and gripped the door frame with both hands. Something, he thought, had run with him through the woods last night. Something, or someone, had brought back his cane. Understood that it was his. Knew where to find him in order to return it.

There was no wireless internet in the cottage; sometimes even the phone signal was spotty. John was not surprised to find himself driving into town to find an Internet cafe and search the mysterious word "woodwose".

"The wild man," Wikipedia informed him, "(also wildman, or 'wildman of the woods', archaically woodwose or wodewose) is a mythical figure that appears in the artwork and literature of medieval Europe, comparable to the satyr or faun type in classical mythology and to Silvanus, the Roman god of the woodlands." It went on to offer him accounts of the wild man's appearance in art and literature and parallel figures in other mythologies, such as the Russian leshy and the brutish Enkidu who befriended the hero in the Epic of Gilgamesh. There were also references to legends of Celtic heroes who went mad after a great battle or being cursed and lived alone in the woods--Lailoken, Sweeney, even Merlin.

Curious, he followed up some links about Merlin and found the text of a Life of Merlin from the twelfth century in which Merlin was a prince who retreated to the woods after his three brothers were killed in battle.

"... he departed secretly, and fled to the woods not wishing to be seen as he fled. He entered the wood and rejoiced to lie hidden under the ash trees; he marvelled at the wild beasts feeding on the grass of the glades; now he chased after them and again he flew past them; he lived on the roots of grasses and on the grass, on the fruit of the trees and on the mulberries of the thicket. He became a silvan man just as though devoted to the woods. For a whole summer after this, hidden like a wild animal, he remained buried in the woods, found by no one and forgetful of himself and of his kindred."

That struck a little too close to home. So did the description of Merlin sitting by a fountain on the top of a mountain, surrounded by hazel trees and shrubs. He thought of the spring amidst the rocks in the night forest and shivered a little despite the stuffy warmth of the cafe.

A few groceries and fresh batteries for his torch and radio justified the trip in pragmatic terms. It was late afternoon when he got back to the cottage, and the sun was lower behind the trees than he had expected. Briskly John set about making dinner, forcing himself to think about the beer he had brought home--he hadn't had a pint in ages, thanks to the meds he'd been on. Yet while a couple of pork chops were sizzling in the skillet, he looked out the back window into the gathering darkness and saw a gleam of eyes looking back.

Eyes. Eyes that glowed like a cat's, but blue. And not down in the bushes, at knee level, but high up, at man height.

John turned off the flame under the skillet and switched on the light over the back door. The gleaming eyes wavered but did not go away. Quickly he got the torch and his gun, hidden in the bread box because it seemed necessary to keep a gun hidden even if you were living completely alone in the woods. The torch he kept in hand; the gun went inside his waistband at the small of his back.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped just outside. He was clearly visible in the light. He flicked on the torch but kept it aimed at the ground. "Come on, then." He pitched his voice to carry. "Come out where I can see you."

For a moment he held his breath. It felt like everything else in the forest was doing the same. Then the gleaming blue eyes moved within the shadows, and the shadows themselves shifted and came forward, into the light.

For a moment John thought he must be looking at an actor, a prankster. It was like something out of that movie with Christopher Lee, where they burned the policeman alive and sang while they did it. Something enormously tall, with an inhuman face and massive antlers, was swaying toward him. His heart slammed against his ribs, and he brought up the torch beam, forcing himself to do it slowly. The advancing menace stopped, just where the light from above the cottage door fell on it. John ran the torch beam slowly upwards, trying to make sense of what he saw.

A crown of antlers. Not as big as the rack of a stag, but big, compared to the human-sized head that bore them. Antlers rising out of dark curls that glistened garnet-red where the light struck them, and even without the antlers it was a good six feet tall. The eyes were slanted above high, sharp cheekbones, silvery now that they were not reflecting the light like a cat's. The nose was human-shaped but dark-skinned like a deer's.

John shifted from one foot to the other, and--it, the creature, startled. Tensed. On either side of its head, large, deer-like ears flicked forward, then back, then forward again. Powerful tendons stood out in the long, slender neck. Fingers curled and uncurled.

"I won't hurt you." The same tone had worked on Pashtun and Dari children who hadn't spoken a word of English, only the language of injury and pain. "You can come closer."

The long ears flickered. There was a strange huffing sound which he realized must be sniffing; the being was trying to catch his scent. With silent, delicate steps, lifting its feet high, it came closer. The face, the face was undeniably human. Masculine? A broad, soft mouth, but broad angular shoulders, flat chest, bunched biceps.

John consciously relaxed every muscle in his body and essayed a smile. "That's right. All right, then." The antlered head tipped toward him, and the creature took another step. Now he could see a fine dusting of hair on the upper body, thickening to a reddish pelt on the legs, and through the fine hair, markings on the face, the shoulders, the arms that seemed to be on the skin rather than in the hair, reddish-brown like mehndi against shockingly pale skin.

Woodwose. Hadn't that Wikipedia article said the wild man was covered with hair? And now that he looked, the thing, whatever it was, it was definitely male. There was a lot of thick fur round the groin but no missing the heavy testicles and an impressive prick, sheathed all the way to the tip. But the hands that slowly lifted, palm out, to show their openness were just as definitely human: Five digits, an opposable thumb, lines in the palm, though the fingertips were the same dark hue as the nose.

"That's right." John matched the gesture with the hand that wasn't holding the torch. "Come closer, then?"

It did. John took a slow deep breath, maintained his poised of stillness and relaxation. The antlered head dipped closer yet, silver eyes widening, then narrowing, nostrils quivering and lips parted. He got just a hint of the thing's own scent, something like good patchouli and healthy horses in a clean stable, earth and animal, with a strange tang underneath that was neither.

There was nothing animal in the way those eyes swept over him. Otherworldly, ethereal, maybe, but no brute incomprehension. Those eyes, and the thing's behavior, they were unmistakably *intelligent*. He couldn't keep calling it creature, thing, *it*, not even to himself.

Slowly, he raised his hand to point to himself, touching his chest in the universal gesture of self-identification. "John." He did not quite point at the antlered being. "You?"

It straightened up, towering suddenly over John. Pointed to him in a graceful, wholly un-animal gesture, and said something. A single syllable, in a deep, impossibly resonant voice that seemed to stroke John's chest and belly. It was closer to "Shaun" than to "John", but it was his name. His name! They were communicating!

"John," he said again, leaning harder on the initial consonant. Pointed to himself, then more directly to his visitor. "Who are you?"

One long, elegant hand spread over the creature's furred chest and it coughed out a short burst of something that sounded to John like a cross between Welsh and Russian, or possibly Klingon. But it sounded like a language, not like noises. He shook his head slowly.

"I don't understand." Point to himself. "I'm John." Point to his visitor. "Who are you?"

He got a brief, inarticulate growl and a shake of the massive head. Then the creature said, with exaggerated care, "DJAAWWNN", gesturing to him, and, gesturing to itself, with the same exaggerated care produced a huff, a trill, and a cough.

It took John several tries, but the closest he could come to what he heard was "Fawnlock." He repeated it, until at last the creature--Fawnlock--jerked its chin and made a dismissive wave with one hand. He swore it then muttered something under its breath.

He was about to say something when his mobile rang from inside the kitchen. Before he could react at all, Fawnlock's ears shot forward, the strange eyes widened, and he fled into the wood, leaving John with one last glimpse of a white deer's tail against his rump.


End file.
